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Obvious statement: there are things to love and things to hate about the new Harry Potter movie. Some changes they made, such as the shield around the castle, were fun and even sensible. Others, such as the omission of the confrontation in the Ravenclaw Common Room and the long, drawn out fight against Voldemort at the end, were disappointing and aggravating. But what disturbs me is what happens when we line certain changes next to each other.

The changed parts under consideration:

- Hermoine speaking to Griphook
Hermoine never mentions to Griphook how she is as much an outsider to Voldemort as goblins are, as she is a Mudblood.
- Neville filling Harry & co. in as to what has happened at Hogwarts
Neville fails to mention how Muggle Studies has changed to how Muggles are inferior creatures. Furthermore, the Cruciatus Curse is used on first years instead of Muggle-born students.
- The Snape flashback
Snape’s anti-Muggle prejudice is omitted, as is his memory of calling Lily a “mudblood.” Instead of becoming a complex, flawed character who is still a bigot, he becomes another savior figure. Lily’s understandable (though tragic) choice to leave Snape is undone and instead she is a fickle girl who goes for the hot jerk. Rowling in an interview said that that was the moment where Snape lost Lily. Thus the film omitted from Snape’s past what was probably its most crucial moment.
- Dumbledore’s backstory
There is no mention of Grindelwald’s backstory, leaving us no idea how Dumbledore got the Elder Wand. Furthermore, this means that there is no mention of Grindelwald’s “Muggles are inferior” beliefs, nor can there be any allusions to Dumbledore’s love.
- Neville’s stand against Voldemort
Voldemort does not commend Neville’s status as a wizard from a pureblood family. Also, Neville gives a long speech about how Harry’s heart lives inside of everyone even if he is dead.
- Luna and Neville end up together
This addition not only is never alluded to in the books, but even goes directly against who Rowling said the two marry in interviews.

Any of these parts taken under consideration individually would seem reasonable perhaps. I might take umbrage (or even Umbridge) at the grotesque mishandling of Snape’s backstory and Neville’s Oscar speech, which was a heavy-handed waste of time that could have better been used showing Harry repairing his original wand, but whatever. However, when all of these are lined up together, we see a systematic deletion of the Pureblood agenda from the last film.

This deletion is pretty surprising, especially when one considers that this is the central ideological conflict of the book series. The final movie would make one believe that the fight is not about a pureblooded Wizard community vs. an inclusive one, but simply the Evil Wizards vs. Harry Potter (as underlined by Neville’s speech).

The bad Wizards must be exterminated so that the good ones may live. Harry never tries to reason with Voldemort. He does not try to get him to repent to save his soul. We do not even know in this version if he casts the harmless “expelliarmus” when he kills Voldemort. Harry in this version is out for blood, as are many of the “good guys.” This film is not one about tolerance; it’s one about cleaning house. It’s not a film about inclusivity; it’s about getting rid of everyone who stands in your way. Even the Malfoys don’t have a place at table in the final celebration.

Why is this film giving up Rowling’s message of tolerance, a message so prevalent in the books I used to accuse it of being heavy-handed? Because, ultimately, this film is a very conservative film. In this climate of tea-partiers running Congress and Mormon vampire tales ruling the box office, perhaps a bleeding heart film about love of those who are different is not the smartest financial strategy. Notice that the filmmakers even ensure that Dumbledore cannot be gay, since he has no one in his backstory with whom to be gay. There must not be the slightest hint of anything that could keep the red states from inflating the box office gross.

Bigotry is fine. It is not a trait of the bad guys. It’s not directed against the good, smart people like Hermione. It is not something that could lose you the love of your life. It will never try to tempt you to the wrong side by telling you that you would benefit from it. Perhaps bigotry is more than fine…perhaps it just doesn’t exist.

So what does the film leave us in its place? The compulsive, aggressive heterosexual coupling we see enforced on Neville and Luna (a single boy and a single girl can never just be friends!). And we now have a new enemy. We have the flamboyant, foppish Other, whose skin and facial structure is very different from the straight, white kids he is terrorizing. Instead of Hitler, Voldemort is everything that Hitler would decry in a frantic speech. He is a freak of nature, a sexual pervert who in a moment of near-pedophilia gets grabby with Draco Malfoy (again, not in the book!). In the final fight, he ties up Harry like a good bondage master and terrorizes the other children with his very large, very aggressive…snake.


Note how daintily Voldemort holds his wand

Thus we have Voldemort as the abject figure. The abject racial other. And the abject homosexual who endangers the future. Lee Edelman in No Future argues that:

…in the uncannily intimate connection between Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort [we see in the Child] a Symbolic resistance to the unmarried men…who embody, as Voldemort’s name makes clear, a wish, a will, or a drive toward death that entails the destruction of the Child. (Edelman 21)

Edelman wrote No Future before the final three Harry Potter books were released, three books which turned the tables, making Voldemort the one obsessed with living forever, whereas Harry underwent a thanatopsis. In the final book, we learned that no one should want to live forever, that to be a true master of Death is to accept its inevitability.

The movie however fulfills Edelman’s argument. Harry never really dies. Instead, futurity is hammered into our heads. Neville’s speech leads us to believe that even when hit with an Avada Kedavra curse, Harry still lives. Everyone carries a piece of Harry. Whereas the book had Harry “die” to protect the people of Hogwarts with his love, the film has Harry “die” only to turn every person at Hogwarts into his Horcrux. Voldemort is right; only one person can live forever. That person is Harry. The Child, the eternal enemy of the abject queer, will live forever. Any maturity he gains along the way, from his acceptance of his mortality to his tolerance of his enemies, must be forgotten, just as any of Peter Pan’s memories must be for the sake of his eternal childhood.



Thus, in the wake of the absent messages of tolerance, we see a film made with Death Eater ideology. A film of seeking eternity at the sake of others, a film of expelling everyone who is different from you, a film of victory through brute force, a film of omissions of difference and celebrations of purity. And, to the defense of the filmmakers, it worked. Through such careful planning, they offended no one. The offense is not even clear except when placed carefully against the book. Instead, everyone loves it and the film is on its way to earning enough money to warrant a rather large vault in Gringotts.

This is not a polished essay. This is not an academic essay. This is barely related to pop culture. But, goddammit, I've wanted to scream at someone the past few weeks for some of the backlash I've seen against "It Gets Better" and I need to vocalize how I feel. You've been warned.

Before proceeding, I recommend you all read Jasbir Puar's horrendous piece that really typifies this problem.

Ready? Now the essay begins.....

Someone needs to ship Jasbir Puar off to an island of stupid, where she can shout her stupid pieces of stupid as stupidly loudly and self-righteously as she stupidly wants.

What? Was that not eloquent enough? Pardon me; I was just inundated with stupid.

The problem with Jasbir Puar’s essay (and quite possibly the problem with Jasbir Puar in general) is that she’s an academic with her head so far shoved up her ass that she believes she has indeed pushed through the ass, up the esophagus, and is indeed seeing out her own mouth and thus has a new and better view on the real world.

This is not to say, of course, that I have a problem with academics with their heads shoved up their asses. I am one. My ass is a delightful place. But at the end of the day, I don’t think I’m dealing with the real world. I may write that all food is shit and vice versa in Bartholomew Fair, but I’m not going to fish stuff out of the toilet and serve it for Christmas dinner. Jasbir Puar, however, is all too ready to serve us her shit and call it “macaroni.” Were she a philosophy professor of the Descartes persuasion, she would criticize the masses for not crossing busy streets at any time, since you could not be sure any of those cars were real.

This is not to say also that academia has nothing to provide the real world. Some great ideas for social change have originated in the academy. But there is a time and a place for everything…

Also, if you think I’m being hard on Jasbir Puar, let me assure you here and now that this is my calm version. I’ve censored out many other personal attacks and name calling. I will just say here and now that I do believe this woman is an idiot and whenever I see her name in print, I cannot help but think of the line in Annie Hall, “How you got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing!!”

The problem is that these videos are not meant for academics. Hell, they’re not meant for most adults. They are meant for teenagers. And not just any teenager. Dan Savage is not aiming these at the out and proud queer who refuses to identify by a gender, is head of his/her QSA, and regularly owns local conservatives young and old in debate….unless that is an elaborate front and s/he is contemplating suicide because s/he isn’t straight. Yes, the big S-word: suicide. These videos are made for teens on the brink of suicide.

I’ve said it once and I’ve said it before: I hate Gay People. Actually, sorry, I’m not being inclusive enough. I hate Queer People. At least the types who can’t seem to take one second, step back from the situation, and realize “IT IS NOT ALL ABOUT YOU!” That’s why vidoes like this exist. Because some queer young adults realized there was a movement going on and realized, “Hey, this isn’t about me. I have been fortunate enough to have the circumstances [be it family, friends, community, or just disposition] in my life that I have a healthy attitude towards my sexuality. I fully realize that anyone who has a problem with it is at fault, not me. [pause] But I want you to talk to ME! I WANT THE BIG ATTENTION ON ME! Don’t just focus on those suicidal kids! Help out me and my comparatively minor problems!”

[Oh, and for any of you who cannot appreciate the word “comparatively” in there and think they’re equivalent, please go to the blackboard and write “If given the choice between jumping off a bridge or having people presume I’m a gender I’m not, I would say ‘flip a coin because they’re both just as bad’” 1000 times.

Also, I will admit I’ve never been able to sit through that whole video. I find it more difficult to watch than Two Girls, One Cup. I can only make it about a minute in before the self-satisfaction gets to me. These are kids who have had the privilege (oh man, I love using that word – it automatically makes the other side wrong) to be in a situation where they can be out and proud and do not recognize that their issues are not the biggest ones at the moment. Honestly, if you’re fifteen and out in high school and okay, shut up about how it does not get better. Because YOU ARE WALKING PROOF that it IS getting better.]

These videos are not made for these people and they certainly are not made for academics. They do not acknowledge radical queer politics or the various strains of debate in queer theory. They do not discuss Judith Butler’s arguments on gender and sexuality. Because, were I to venture a guess, the average suicidal queer youth could not give two fucks about these. He can’t tell a Halberstam from an Edelman. She just wants to make it through high school intact, for his parents not to kick him out if they find out, and find the light at the end of the tunnel, whatever that light may be – be it college, a city, or independently living in that same town. Yes, these are all baby step versions of eventually fighting the good fight for complete equality between heteros and queers and races and transgenders (but not too much equality because we don’t want to be assimilationist). But Puar seems to want to launch into crazy PhD math (which, from the sounds of it, disproves everything you learned in high school) when these kids are still struggling with their multiplication tables.

Let’s look at one of her other complaints:

Most of the contributors are white, upper-class, gay men.

Upper-class I can’t defend really. The big ones are celebrities. That’s how the universe works. Non-trans…well, we got the same problem, since they are sadly few and far between. These are problems with society as a whole, but you can insult your cliché here about babies and bathwater.

As for white gay men, yes it was started by one. Many have answered the call. So have women though. And, if you watch the Pixar one though, for example, you see more diversity. What we need is more people contributing, thinking of other ways it does get better aside from the direction Dan Savage draws. Because it does get better in a lot of ways, Mr. Savage just mapped out his own way and, like Watchmen and the comic book, people confused the invitation to a wide direction of avenues with a format that must be followed.

However, pouting and sulking and threatening to take all your blocks and go home because no one wants to play your game is not going to help diversify the offerings. If you want the message to be augmented, you have to augment it. Oh, and the message is “It gets better.” Not “Make it better” or “It doesn’t get better.”

Puar writes, “Ultimately, the best part of the viral explosion of Savage's project is that so many have chimed in to explain how and why it doesn't just get better.”

I completely agree. You know, if I’m a queer teen who is on the brink of suicide…I really want to hear it doesn’t get better. I want to hear supporting arguments for why I should stick my head in that noose. Because, this may be a surprise to you Ms. Puar, but that is what those are. Supporting arguments for suicide to this kid. These videos are meant literally to talk someone off the ledge. These are not academic arguments. Sometimes it gets better, sometimes it doesn’t. Guess what? That’s life! But if I know someone whose wife left him and job fired him, I’m not going to talk about how hard it is to date someone nowadays and the crappy economy as he stands on the 20th story balcony, am I? I’d be honest, but would you really recommend that? If you’re trying for some Malthusian tactic right now by decreasing the population as a whole via teen suicide, okay, I can respect that. Everything else though….uh uh.

I would love to see Ms. Puar working at a queer suicide hotline. I think it would go something like this, but with more crying and stuttering on the youth’s end and more smug, self-assurance on Puar’s.

Puar: Hello?
Queer Youth: Hi. I’m thinking of killing myself.
Puar: Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. It just gets worse as you get older. If you’re lucky, it may just stay as it is.
Queer Youth: Oh. And I thought being a transgender was bad now.
Puar: You’re transgender?! [laughs] Oh man, you’re fucked. It’s just the shit for you! You’re not gonna believe it, but if you stay around a bit longer, you’ll get downright nostalgic for these days.
Queer Youth: Wow…
Puar: Yup. Remember now sweetie, down the road, not across the street!

And “Make It Better?” Yeah, no one has been saying that at all since Stonewall. Great job, innovators! These people really could get a gig in corporate America with this ability to repackage something so inane and something we already have in excess into something that sounds new and daring. Then they really could make their own, lovely assimilationist “It Gets Better” video!

[Also, aside: please stop acting like you’re such a radical, Ms. Puar. At the end of the day, you are very likely tenured or tenure-tracked at a very prestigious graduate department. You moved to the liberal mecca and pay your taxes just like everyone else you criticize, so your bluster don’t impress me.]

The problem with both of these other tactics is that they fail to recognize the point of the It Gets Better campaign. It’s a painkiller. Painkillers help. They have their problems, but they help. You can get addicted to them and lose sight of reality. They can have adverse side effects. But they make the time to recovery (or in this case, adulthood) easier. Sometimes, painkillers even aid in recovery. If you don’t believe in “It Gets Better,” I urge you to get your wisdom teeth removed and to refuse any form of painkillers, on the basis that they will not heal your wounds immediately.

It doesn’t always get better in adulthood, but I know for a fact it gets better for some and from the fact that there are clearly alive transpeople and queer people of color, I’d venture a guess it gets better for at least a few of them as well. And if it doesn’t get better, well then, the kid will only find himself more disappointed and kill herself anyway. Thus the videos have done no real harm than delay the inevitable, unless you really take umbrage with the delay.

In short, I guess my problem is, I don’t know what Puar wants. She’s just a vicious, destructive beast, ripping things up and saying “Nuh-uh” because they aren’t perfect. She’s being a typical academic, and in academia, those folks are my heroes. They’re bad-asses and a delight to watch. But I feel the same way about Jack Bauer and Dirty Harry in their own universes. I was horrified when the real world took up Bauer-logic and supported torture and I am equally aghast to see Puar attempting to do so to Dan Savage and a campaign aimed at a very real problem. There were a slew of suicides. Let’s all say it again: there were a slew of suicides. Don’t tell kids “it won’t get better” before they have a chance to find out for themselves. Don’t shallowly shout “make it better” as if no one has thought to utter those sentiments before. If you want to make something better that you believe it broken, make “It Gets Better” better. It’s a great idea. It has flaws. But it’s time to step out into the real world and recognize that fixing those flaws is better than picking at them till the whole thing collapses.

Ah, Kick-Ass. Don’t you just love when a comic book thing becomes the hot topic du jour? Well, I don’t, but that’s for another entry.

There are about a billion and one topics I can talk about with Kick-Ass. There’s Hit-Girl and how for some reason, holding a kid at gunpoint or knife point (as seen in numerous films, such as Red Dragon, Dark Knight, etc.) or killing him or her off (e.g. The Searchers, Punisher, Gladiator) to fuel a revenge plot are both completely acceptable plot points and really not even worthy of a sentence, whereas once the kid dares to fight back, society has crumbled. Maybe the paradox is related to the idea that kids are sacred. And if we kill something sacred, well then, we can get really upset at the destruction of the sacred object. After all, Christianity is based around the destruction of the most sacred person and how darn great that was and our culture, for better or for worse, is based very much on Christianity. But whereas Passion of the Christ was adored by many a right-wing nutjob, I am relatively certain that Revenge of the Christ would get the picket-treatment. So yeah, violence and kids is honky-dory as long as the kids are on the receiving end. Got that settled? Cool.

There’s also the use of the gay joke and whether or not the movie flopped. Okay, so aside from the main point of the entry, there are three topics I can write about. But my interest lies in the fact that, upon talking to people, there seems to be a general dissatisfaction or uneasiness around how cartoonish the movie gets towards the end.

Kick-Ass starts with a promise of an uber-realistic to the point of hilarious comic book movie. We get to see what would really happen if someone tried to be a superhero: his costume would look a bit dumb, he would be terrified of jumping from buildings and when he tried to fight crime, he would get the ass kicked out of him. Many fans took this approach as a parody of the mainstream superhero movie genre, or, if I may relabel it, the Marvel movie genre. Indeed, the music often turns into a trope on Danny Elfman’s Spider-Man score and even the first 20 minutes or so are a pretty straightforward parody of the first Spider-Man movie.

But that premise cannot sustain itself. To hold the mirror of reality up to the artificial world of spandex superheroes is an entertaining Saturday Night Live sketch or possible even short film, but such an action feature would wear out its welcome fast. How many times could we watch Kick-Ass get beaten up? How many times can he flinch at the edge of a building? A super-hero in the real world movie cannot work because there are no superheroes in the real world. The logic that makes this idea worthy of our attention and allows it to become a satire would be the very same logic that undoes its ability to progress through the necessary three-act plot and reach some narrative resolution. A real Kick-Ass would just be the recipient of knife-points and spend the interim of his hospital stays looking for lost cats.

Thankfully, for the film and the viewer, Kick-Ass is not a parody of the Marvel superhero movie. It’s a parody of the DC superhero film, specifically Watchmen and Nolan’s Batman films. Why these? Just because I didn’t like them? Nah, were that the case, I would have included the Fantastic Four movies and X3 in there. I say this because Kick-Ass is not a parody of the “mainstream” superhero film; it is a satire of the “realistic” superhero film.

The first twenty minutes may be giving us a fantasy-free variety of Spider-Man, but they are also delivering the promises of Nolan or Snyder with abundance. Nolan strove to give us a real urban hero: a Batmobile that “made sense” for city streets, a believable training background for the protagonist, and villains that reflect the problems of society today and use knives as weapons instead of freeze-rays and killer plants.

However, ultimately, as I pointed out two years ago when tearing Dark Knight a new one, Batman is not realistic. A billionaire secreting financing his own one-man war on crime after secretly training decades around the world is only a miniscule bit more believable than webslinging across Times Square. In fact, people should not fear the man in a giant rubber Batsuit, but mock him. And that reaction is the one of the first “villains” in Kick-Ass. Kick-Ass is a crazy person, a nerd, a loser, an idiot in a playsuit. He does the best one can do with the resources accessible to an actual superhero. And it’s funny.

Such a parody makes sense, after all. Why expose the stupidity of a real-life superhero to a series of films that have genetically altered arachnids, weather controlling mutants, and Jessica Alba trying to act? It mocks a genre for not having something it never pretended to possess. However, to go after a subgenre by giving all that it promised but failed to deliver is to have a more worthy target.

But the film extends its satire. It does not simply show what the “realistic” superhero film lacks; it then exaggerates the necessary trajectory of any “realistic” action film. As the film progresses, it descends from this almost hyper-realistic world into a Tarantino-esque Lala-Land. This progression is heralded in by the introduction of Hit-Girl and Big Daddy. These two, in a sense, are the quintessential “real” superhero. Their outfits are dark, they use lethal force, and, unlike Kick-Ass, they deliver a real plot, real conflict, and real results. Yet they are also the most detached from reality itself. Their very costumes and mannerisms evoke the cartoonish. Hit-Girl has purple hair like an anime character and enters to a perky soundtrack that could very well be performed by Puffy Ami Yumi. Big Daddy talks like Adam West’s Batman, everything from which Nolan strived to detach himself. He also paints the areas around his eyes like Joel Schumacher’s Batmen did. Yes, there may be believable reasons for the character’s choices (colorful wigs and weird speech patterns hide identities), but such reasons do not automatically nullify such evocations. Whatever the logic behind such choices is, Hit-Girl looks like a she could join the Sailor Senshi and Big Daddy could say “old chum” any second.

Furthermore, their larger-than-life traits extend beyond their appearances. They take on dozens of henchmen at a time and live. They can catch guns (and even reload them) midair like refugees from The Matrix. In fact, their arsenal itself seems to rival that of the white room in the first Matrix* film. They even own a jetpack because, you know, that’s so much more down-to-earth than just jumping out the window and flying. I know they were stealing money from the drug busts…but could that buy all of those weapons? And wouldn’t someone be able to trace them?

[*In fact, the parallels to The Matrix are quite fascinating. After all, The Matrix attempts to explain the unrealistic, aerial movements of kung-fu action heroes. But how does it do it? By placing everything within an even larger artificial reality, both literally by introducing the Matrix program and by forcing the audience to believe that sentient robots have taken over mankind. I suppose that is more plausible than thinking a man can jump between skyscrapers. I do not know if I was even being sarcastic in that last sentence.]



But these two are very much like Batman or The Minutem – excuse me, Watchmen: cartoon characters running around a real world, trying to pass. But they manage to appear only more cartoonish and their superhuman acts seem more egregiously, ridiculously powerful because they have purported themselves to be below superhuman. In movies such as Spider-Man and X-Men, storytellers introduce a series of rules and mostly adhere to them. We do not question that Magneto can take on a veritable army because he can manipulate metal. Wolverine can take a licking and keep on ticking thanks to a healing factor. Kick-Ass should not be able to endure such punishment. And, in the beginning of the movie, he isn’t. He actually does go to the hospital (a rare locale for a superhero unless he is visiting his aunt or a district attorney) and he seems pretty out of it by the end of his first “victory.” But yet, he goes on to fight another battle immediately after the torture scene. He admits that he hurts and by all means our hero should be returning to the hospital, or at least his bed room. But no, he still manages to take on Red Mist.

This hole is gaping, but upon looking through it, we can see similar instances in Nolan’s films. Batman should show up in the hospital after certain run ins. While amazing, Alfred can only do so much. And his background of service in the British SS seems a bit more ridiculous in a reality where Joker cannot even use laughing gas, so I doubt they would invoke that bit of character history. Or, to return to the prior point, his triumphs over legions of criminals should be directed with the same anime-esque glee that fills Hit-Girl’s assaults, for they should be just as much as blemish on the believability of Chicago-Gotham as Hit-Girl is on Manhattan. The aforementioned jet-pack, the bazooka that ends the movie with an exclamation point (a long line and a dot), and its ilk are all things meant for the funny pages, but so is the contraption Bruce used in his Hong-Kong adventure, his tank of a Batmobile, and even his Batarangs.

In short, the very act of promising reality in a comic book movie only makes it more cartoonish and unreal than a typical comic book movie. We may not believe people can shoot beams out of their eyes, but once we buy into that fact (one no one would ever question Cyclops when watching X-Men), we can believe that the ability to shoot beams out of one’s eyes makes one a one-man army. But we know there are limits to what the human body can do, even if aided by intense training and the best weapons that money can secretly buy. Kick-Ass more blatantly does what Rorschach, Ozymandius, and Batman have already done: made the human superhuman while still trying to pass them off as human. A girl with a sword must be just as competent as Superman, which is even less plausible than the concept of Superman himself.



Sure Kick-Ass may appear more cartoonish than Dark Knight or its ilk, but that is only because it so enthusiastically owns its cartoonishness. But in flaunting its own implausibility, it manages to show that art can never be life. Especially when that art involves wearing a cape.

[Preface: This piece was something I wrote last summer while in severe essay-writing withdrawal (yes, that exists). It occupies that tenuous space between parody of a genre and actually being a genuine attempt - in this case, film criticism. I feel like it is too ridiculous to be serious, but a bit too earnest to be parody. This idea (ridiculous, yet earnest literary criticism of popular culture) was actually the original idea for my blog...however, I soon realized it was not all that sustainable...or would at least lead to a blog that was not updated all too often. However, this essay was alluded to in one of my grad school statements of purpose. In fact, that school is the one I will be going to. But enough about me. Enjoy and maybe even have a few nice flashbacks to the summer of 2009.]



“Song is awesome vid is gay” (airballer 13)
“umm the video is kinda........... if you know wat i mean like WTF!? Lol” (aliciaboo12)
“This song rules I mean it but the video just sucks. Love this band and song” (Nevertrustme232)
“never ever ever trust a ho HAHAHAHA this song is kinda insulting to girls but i frickin love it” (chickyboheimen123)

These quotations are a few YouTube responses to 3Oh!3’s music video for “Don’t Trust Me.” After an initial viewing, one is tempted to dismiss the short film and the song as fatuous and misogynistic. The lyrics, with their refrain of “Don’t trust a ho” and their urging girls to “do the Helen Keller and talk with [their] hips,” elicit such a reaction quite understandably. The video ostensibly seems to be an accomplice to this ideology. It proffers us the enticing image of scantily clad women throwing themselves all over the last two men in the world. It submerges us into a stereotypical, imbecilic straight male fantasy. All the men on earth can die, but as long as two remain, they will still be king and women will persist to be objects that exist only for their desires.

Or is this interpretation the case? Let’s look again at the responses. People who love the song find themselves hating the video or are confused by it. Some label it pejoratively as “gay.” In fact, this work may actually be undercutting every other music video that revolves around the scenario of “straight man singing as girls throw themselves on top of him.” For, upon closer inspection, every attempt by the 3Oh!3 to assert their masculinity, to prove themselves as the ultimate alpha males and the quintessence of heterosexual male potency, only acts to further feminize or queer them.



The story commences by informing the viewer, “A global virus of catastrophic proportions has attacked the entire male population. Only two male models from Colorado survive.” For starters, let us observe that “the entire male population” has been attacked, not “the entire male population except for two male models from Colorado.” These two men are merely survivors; they have sustained the plague’s assault and lived. But does that which could not kill them really make them stronger? Or have they emerged unmanned, lacking their most essential parts?

Even if they believe they have survived completely intact, they still have another problem: they are no longer in the world of men. Two male protagonists of this video have descended from their familiar world of men into the world of women: a world of modeling, chandeliers, and fine drapery. This reality is one without typical masculinity and the comforts it enshrouds its patriarch inhabitants within. The world of men has left them. The men have left them. They are stuck among the women and are therefore women themselves. These two, stranded among 3 billion women, have can no longer rely on their phallic power of being in the majority. Instead, they are left unmanned with only their sexuality as a weapon: a situation traditionally assigned to women. The virus did not kill off all the men; it manned all the women, thus killing off all the women, but two.



The two men have already (for lack of a better term) embraced their position as the new females in this society. They are models: subjects of the feminine (now masculinized) gaze. They are on display for everyone else to ogle and objectify. They are in lingerie, their near naked bodies exhibited as they dance.

Furthermore, the underwear itself is important. It appears to be Ginch-Gonch underwear. Ginch-Gonch’s entire advertising strategies infantilizes its audience. It encourages men to be “boys” and “to live like a kid.” But are not kids always-already, by sheer nature of not having gone through puberty, castrated? Is not a boy inherently under the power of his mother? Are not mothers meant to “watch” their boys in order to control them? In the relationship of boy and mother, the mother is the man, and the boy is the woman.

Yes, there are women in the first shot, and yes, they are wearing lingerie, but they are static. They sit in the background as motionless as the chairs they occupy. Are they even models, or just furniture? For the first minute, they are content to sit in the background, barely noticeable, as the two men entice our eye, and dance for our pleasure. Even the camera seems aware that these females are furniture. It cuts to them during the beats, but then in turn cuts to the lights in the same way. The women at the photo shoot are no different than the lights. They are necessary props, but not interesting in and of themselves. Finally, the two different beings merge into one self-same creature: the photographess whose face is obscured by her camera.

The women eventually rise and dance, but are we even meant to care? 3Oh!3 remains center stage, dancing more than any other party. Why? Because we are meant to know that they are indeed the alpha males. This video is not meant to showcase the women that they can get, but the two men and their ability to get the women. But, through such an attempt to attest masculinity, the film cannot showcase the women and therefore can only showcase the men and the men therefore become the women that are showcased. Even when Nathaniel (the one with dark, long hair) sings “Don’t trust a ho” he refuses to point at one of the scantily-clad women. Instead, he becomes the ho. He imagines himself with breasts and then starts to again remove his newly-acquired clothes. He ends his refrain by saying “Don’t trust me,” since he and the “ho” are one and the same.

Of course, by becoming women, 3Oh!3, being womanish men, are queered. We can already see this in the choice of Ginch-Gonch underwear. The line is popular among the gay community and even has aimed certain ad campaigns particular at the homosexual community. But this destruction of 3Oh!3’s supposed hetero-sexual normality goes further. While the women do rub themselves over the two models, the singers in fact seem much more predisposed with caressing each other. This idea, only hinted towards in the first scene, becomes nearly explicit in the wrestling scenario.

The women in the wrestling scene are even more forgettable and invisible than those in the prior one. The photoshoot premise also seems to have gone out the proverbial window. Now we are just watching some sort of wrestling match, or more appropriately, we are just watching two guys all over each other. Sean (the blonde) at one point chokes Nathaniel and calls to mind asphyxiation as orgasm draws near. He soon pulls Nathaniel back by the leg, like a cartoon caveman about to have his way with his newest acquisition. He even is on top of Nathaniel at one point, ostensibly pinning him, but insinuating he could sodomize him at any second.

The men in this manless world do not have their choice of women. By being alone, by being singled out against the world, they can only turn to each other, only have each other, and have been married already by their circumstances. Even if these men were attracted to women, they would still be queered. We have already established that as the lone men in a world of women, they are women. If they are women attracted to women, they are queer.




Therefore again in this wrestling scenario, this display of masculinity, this showcasing of how strong their bodies are, of how well they could seize women, only transforms into another thing: how well they are at “getting” each other. The showcase is now of their bodies, and of Sean and Nathaniel’s bodies abilities to obtain Sean and Nathaniel.

Finally, the video transitions to its third, final, and most curious vision: the two members of 3Oh!3 (and those curious women) as cavemen. Again, their bodies are exposed and on display (Sean even tries to make up for lost skin, so to say, by stripping off the top of his wrestling uniform during this part of the video). Again, the women are forced into the background. Again, Sean and Nathaniel are the ones dancing for our pleasure. Again, they are the same as the props (or are they? Nathaniel seems much more interested in having sex with the prop bison than any of the cavewomen).

Finally, the work reaches its climax when Nathaniel says, “Shush girl. Shut your lips. Do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips.” When only heard, this part is misogynist and perhaps even offensive. However the video undercuts that elementary interpretation. Sean is first Helen Keller as he mimes feeling his way due to lack of sight. Nathaniel soon joins him. They have placed themselves in the role of the ultimate woman of male fantasy: the completely castrated woman. In this role, they can neither see, nor hear, nor talk…nor penetrate. They accept their necessary roles as subservient creatures in what was supposed to be the society that they ruled with the last two remaining penises. This conclusion reaches fulfillment as Nathaniel is the one who “talk[s] with [his] hips” and showcases his anus for the world to see.

Suddenly, the video goes fuzzy for a moment. We have reached critical mass. The proposed reality, this “Planet of the Apes”-esque world where women have the power, men are objectified and the subject of the gaze, and where the last two men are anything but men as they “do the Helen Keller” must collapse. A “proper” music video must take its place.

The first image is one of the most undressed models from the first scenario, now front and center and ready to entice us, just like she should have been from the start. Next is Nathaniel, who wears the protection of sunglasses and looks out from them only to assure us that he has reclaimed the gaze and is using it. The photographess reappears, now emerging from her camera so we can see her whole face. She can no longer shield herself from the newly reconstructed male gaze. Finally, Sean appears. He is a fully covered man (we can’t even see his eyes), no longer the boy who paraded around in his Ginch-Gonch briefs. The first model from this montage soon reappears, just in case we still had any doubts what direction this video was taking.

When the montage is over, Sean and Nathaniel fall. The former fantasy of the past three minutes is over, having already reached its orgasmic climax. Their charade of their post-ejaculation penises only works to affirm the fact that they did ejaculate and therefore must have had an erection for the entire three minutes. By falling, ironically, they become men.



In the last 30 seconds, they are men and the women are now on display. They force their way to the front of many shots. In the wrestling match, they have gotten into the fight, just so they can be all over the bodies of Sean and Nathaniel. They even do the split jumps that 3Oh!3 had done less than a minute earlier. However, this new world cannot last, not even for 3 minutes. Once the women start moving, once they get up from their chairs, everything becomes unstable. The cuts grow even more frenetic. The furniture that the girls had mimicked flies around the room of the photoshoot. Furniture should not move on its own, and neither should woman in a music video. Do they not know the video was about 3Oh!3, not them? Finally, this world has no option but to combust, which it does in a symbolic mushroom cloud.

Ultimately, this video shows us the necessary dilemma of the stereotypical rap video (i.e. that in which a bare-chested, well muscled man is surrounded by women fawning over him, e.g. Nelly’s “Hot in Herre”): the men must either showcase himself and his body and therefore become a woman, or he must let the women take center stage and therefore lose control of his video. Furthermore, when the video stars not a solo artist, but a duo (or more), this showcasing must invite hints of homosexuality. When two men have their bodies on display, they are creating a type of gay porn no matter what they do. Their only other option is not to be on display, which leads us to the former problem of loss of control.

The past month, I had a few dreams that have been parodies/homages of The Wizard of Oz. Naturally, I mean the movie, not the book, as the dreams tend to be Technicolor spectacles and involve me skipping down the Yellow Brick Road (since, ever since Judy Garland did so in 1939, there really has not been an alternate, acceptable method of travel along such an itinerary). Upon reflection, I realized that the best part of these dreams were that, in a way, they were just as valid as the “original.” After all, Garland’s Dorothy only dreams she goes to Oz and, upon waking up, I too can say to my friends, “I had the most wonderful dream. And you were there. And you were there,” etc. The whole idea of dreaming that one is in the dream part of MGM’s The Wizard of Oz is actually quite post-modern if one thinks about it.

I then had the good fortune of seeing The Wizard of Oz again, on a big screen, at The Film Forum in New York City. I went there with my friend anticipating to marvel at the Technicolor and some of the aesthetic choices, and maybe the acting, but that would be it. I would appreciate Oz as many do: a brilliantly done fable that has withstood the tests of time. I would see the movie as a masterpiece so elegantly simple, a tale with such a universal appeal, and the quintessence of imagination on celluloid. Hell, even the furthest Roger Ebert goes with glorifying the cranial aspects of the film is to say:

``The Wizard of Oz'' has a wonderful surface of comedy and music, special effects and excitement, but we still watch it six decades later because its underlying story penetrates straight to the deepest insecurities of childhood, stirs them and then reassures them. As adults, we love it because it reminds us of a journey we have taken. That is why any adult in control of a child is sooner or later going to suggest a viewing of ``The Wizard of Oz.''

Upon revisiting the film, I was shocked to discover a movie with a tremendous amount of bite. In the act of creating an Oz perhaps more archetypal than that of L. Frank Baum’s novel, it still manages to parody and question the subject material. The Wizard of Oz is simultaneously the classic Oz and the classic Oz parody.



Before I go further, let me just add a few words to those of you raising Joan Crawford eyebrows right now. By the time the movie came out, the novel was already 39 years old and widely regarded as a “classic.” Of course, “classic” delivers both reverence and a propensity to be mocked. Furthermore, the film was at one point under the direction of George Cukor and eventually delivered to Victor Fleming to create. Both of these men were not simple-minded, idealistic artists who only wished to entertain children. Fleming had quite a few pre-Code sex comedies under his belt and Cukor, after leaving both Oz and Gone with the Wind, would find himself directing the bitchy catfight known as The Women. While none of these facts automatically prove my prior paragraph, they should at least quell any knee-jerk reactions that I am simply trying to fit the square peg of post-modernism into the round hole of 1939.

Now for the film…

As I have already said, the movie already feels like a parody of The Wizard of Oz, or at least an homage. Consider any parody/homage you have seen of the film. Most of them involve taking already existing characters and placing them in roles from the classic. One example which immediately comes to mind is Futurama’s. As we watch Leela go along Martin Luther King Blvd (the renamed Yellow Brick Road) she encounters Fry as the Scarecrow, Bender as Tin Man, Dr. Zoidberg as the Cowardly Lobster, Professor Farnsworth as the Wizard, and Mom as the Wicked Witch. We would never simply say she encounters the Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lobster, the Wizard, and Wicked Witch. Furthermore, all of the choices are meant to fit the characters to the pre-made roles from the work and each side (for example the Cowardly Lion and Dr. Zoidberg) has a role to play in the ultimate product on screen.

Oddly enough, we never seem to take note that the exact same concept is at play in the MGM classic film. We do not simply meet the Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, The Wizard, and the Wicked Witch. Just as we think “Oh, look! It’s Fry as the Scarecrow,” we also should think “Oh look! It’s Hunk as the Scarecrow!” Both are fitting matches, as Fry is quite brainless and Hunk had earlier been talking about a head of straw. Just as Mom’s inclination to evil deeds makes her an ideal choice for Leela’s Wicked Witch of the West, so does Miss Gulch’s cruelty make her an ideal choice for Dorothy’s Wicked Witch of the West. Mom’s choice of words colors her portrayal of the Witch; Miss Gulch’s hatred of Toto makes her green-skinned counterpart threaten “I’ll get you my pretty and your little dog too!” (a line absent from the source material).

I could list the differences between the film and the novel for quite some time. But let me just sum up this argument by talking about how each of the actors uses his or her position to play to his or her own acting and comedic strengths. We are watching a classic vaudeville routine as much as we are watching a recreation of Baum’s classic.

I could argue that Dorothy’s Kansas is more akin to our own than to that of L. Frank Baum’s and that, in fact, Dorothy herself has read The Wondeful Wizard of Oz. Encountered with a similar situation and a need to sort out problems, she is taken by her mind into a world very similar to a book from her childhood. The characters of the novel are replaced with familiar faces and situations are modified to become more pertinent to her own crisis. After all, in the original work, Dorothy truly travels to Oz and we know little about Kansas beforehand. The mirroring of her Kansas life to her Oz life is a device unique to the film. Just as I have had dreams about The Wizard of Oz that have reflected my own life (and have found myself not referencing the source material in my dream), so could Garland’s Dorothy have encountered such an experience.

But I digress. The whole dream sequence (i.e. the meat of the film) is conscious of its own theatricality. Every character is an actor playing a role. The movie rubs its Technicolor in the viewers face more than almost any other film had or ever will. But with this self-awareness also comes a self-awareness of the sinister nature of a children’s story, particularly the very one on which it is imbuing cinematic immortality.



This film is not a faithful recreation of L. Frank Baum’s children’s tale. Everything has an edge, a bite, and wink and a nudge to the audience. The whole celebration is Munchkinland is, indeed, quite manic, gaudy, and indicative of an acid trip. Most parodies will include some jab at Munchkinland. But look at Dorothy’s face during the event: she knows she is not in Kansas anymore and the film knows we are not in Kansas anymore. The entire transition to Oz must be anything but gradual. From sepia to Technicolor, from a world where the most action comes from falling into a pit with some pigs (twister excepted, as it is the doorway between Kansas and Oz) into a frantic celebration of nonsense and high-pitched singing. Whereas Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and earlier children’s movies seem comfortable in their spectacle, The Wizard of Oz both excels in such category and is at odds with its own nature.

Furthermore, there is Glinda. Most people seem willing to write Glinda off as an empty-headed character of insipid pink goodness. But actually, Glinda is quite sinister. Parodies have noted the danger she placed Dorothy in by not telling her how to get home immediately (again, a difference between Baum’s novel and the film, as there are two different good witches and Dorothy only meets Glinda at the end). Yet her dark nature only begins here. Watch again the first encounter between Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West. Glinda pushes Dorothy towards the billow of smoke before pulling her away to “protect” her. Furthermore, throughout the whole exchange, she taunts the Wicked Witch of the West and practically paints a target on Dorothy. Even putting the ruby slippers on Dorothy by magic is a machination of the film. In this “parody” of Oz, the good witch is just as foul-minded and sadistic as the wicked one. At least the Wicked Witch is courteous enough to be ugly and to grimace.

I could again rattle off examples, such as the effeminate, queer natures of the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion or the changed nature of the Wizard’s gifts. All I will say about the latter subject is that whereas the novel emphasizes the fulfillment of the characters and how they had those traits all along, the movie appears more skeptical. After all, the Scarecrow doesn’t even give a correct mathematical equation. Instead, the focus on that scene is the movie seems to be the deception and ineptness of the Wizard and gullibility of the others. Their gifts are as much of a placebo to keep them happy as a kid’s movie is a placebo to make children feel at ease with a world on the brink of war (or a dream to make Dorothy believe there is no place like home).

And that sentence does bring us to the end. The end may be the most unsettling part of the film. Yes, there is no place like home, but there’s also no place like Alcatraz. We are ferried away from a tear-jerking scene where Dorothy says goodbye to the first characters we have seen display true affection and respect to her to the boring, sepia world of Kansas, full of claustrophobic shots and people who do not believe a single word coming out of Dorothy’s mouth. Is Dorothy’s final mantra the truth or merely a way to delude herself into happiness, even though she just abandoned her friends and the beautiful Technicolor world of Oz where she was a hero?



In short, the entire movie seems critical of its own story and characters. It tinges “good” characters with hints of sadism, heroic ones with behavior not fitting their genders, and joyous celebrations with bouts of insanity. The very tale is a dark retelling of Oz despite being the iconic telling of the story. And, all the way, it manages also to doubt its own reality. The very novel is framed as a dream, not a reality, a world of fake sets and actors in make-up. Yet, would that make Kansas the reality? Are we comfortable allowing a world without color and with character actors on the loose in the vague pretense of being farm hands to be reality? I am not sure. After all, this reality is far less present than the dream and in the end, both are figments of the imagination.

I suppose reasons like this are what grad school is for. I have only scratched the surface of the Oz question, one that most movie critics seem terrified of even acknowledging. Which I guess I leave as my final question: why has no one written about this…or if they have, why has it not broken into the world of common critical knowledge? Are we so desirous of always having one piece of innocent childhood to return to that we will, if necessary, turn something that was never all that innocent into it? In the end, I guess we are like Dorothy: ready to ignore the reality of our situation and, no matter the circumstance, click our heels together and mutter “there’s no place like home.” We do not care what “home” is, as long as it’s “home.”

This entry is going to be a bit more personal/auto-biographical than my usual work. This past summer, I received a Kindle as a graduation present. My mom’s fiancé (who is a standup guy) got it for me with the best intentions; he knew I was a bibliophile and thought I should try out the much-discussed “next generation of the written word.” He and his intentions unwittingly paved my cliché to hell.

I was hesitant to use the Kindle. Why? Because I’m a clumsy fuck. In fact, only a few weeks after receiving the Kindle, I was at the foot doctor. I won’t go into my medical history, but I needed to get a cast of my foot made. The process required the following ingredients: my Fred Flinstone-sized extremity, the doctor’s assistant, a tub of water, some little-paste-like-cast-strips, and 45 minutes. Naturally, I brought a book. It was The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins and I had purchased a copy of it at a used bookstore for $4.50. As you can surmise, this wasn’t a first edition. Good thing too since during the process, I dropped the novel and watched it plummet in that real-life slow motion that is only attainable when you drop something and know you will not catch it.

That was when I knew that I could never really use a Kindle. Blow-drying a Kindle won’t do you much good. The Kindle also probably can’t withstand being dropped 10 feet onto concrete or a wood floor and I’m not sure how it will hold up against the sand at the beach. Your average paperback is incredibly more durable, for about 1% of the cost. Also, while I’m relatively certain that neither the Kindle nor your average book can withstand your everyday fire (because I’m sure literature-related accidents happen while camping), at least replacing a book (even if it is a new hardcover) is far less costly. Also, when I lose a book, I lose a book, not my entire library (and while you can redownload a book – for now – you lose all your precious notes, which are big for an English major).

Furthermore, I just didn’t see the point to a Kindle. Yes, with music, I can only burn so-many CDs and tend to enjoy switching back and forth between songs and artists quite often. However, my mind is not so addled with ADD that I need a constant cornucopia of books from which to choose at all times. Someone once said that he likes having a Kindle for 14-hour flights. Let’s see. A page a minute seems like a pretty generous average, especially for an Oxford or Penguin classic. A book is about 450 pages, so that means that at most, you only need two books (and that’s if you do nothing but read instead of, you know, sleep, watch something on the chair in front of you, stare out the window, complain about the crying infant, etc.). Yes, two books take up a little bit more space than a thin Kindle…but I find those extra 50 or 75 or 100 cubic inches not all huge of a sacrifice, considering the drawbacks of the Kindle.

So my Kindle lay dormant for the next few months. Finally, after about 150 days of residency in my room in its box, I decided that I should probably at least give it a chance. I was about to embark on an 18-hour car ride and was aware that (if I read in the car for too long) I had a propensity to get car sick. Normally, this problem is not a noticeable one since I don’t go on 18-hour car rides all too often, but I knew it would be inevitable this time and thought that maybe the Kindle would be better.

Even if the effect was purely in placebo territory, it was there. Score one for the Kindle.

I was starting to grow slightly fond of the contraption. I found the search function mildly useful as well as the dictionary. Of course, I was still not sold. Flipping through a book is just exponentially easier, and I really don’t know if there really is a way to rectify that problem, no matter how much better the technology gets. Writing notes can become easier if they add a pen-esque device, but then I’m sure I’d lose that and continuously spend money replacing that (and the current highlighting/note system is quite cumbersome). In short, the Kindle was not the godsend that many technophiles make it out to be, but it was not completely without merit.

Of course, Nazi Germany had a great highway system, socialized heathcare, and was a forerunner in animal rights. (Hurray Godwin’s Law!) So something can still be demonic without being bereft of virtues.

On the one month anniversary of using my Kindle, I went to turn on the screen and continue to plod my way through Cormac McCarthy’s overrated, self-important, and achingly dull The Road. The screen mostly went on. But about 15% of it would not. Granted seeing “the boy moved ********************* said the man” was about as fulfilling as if I actually got to behold McCarthy’s oh-so-stark prose, but this was a matter of principle. I called Amazon and after about ten minutes on the phone, they sent me a new Kindle.

This, as you may have guessed, meant waiting a few days. Amazon was very lucky I was not particularly engrossed by the molasses-esque pace of the novel or else I would have been most cross indeed. As it was, I was still quite cross. In all my years of reading, I have never opened up a book to find a page malfunctioning (okay, there have been printer errors, but I tend to find those when first looking a book). I felt as if I were living in some work by Italo Calvino, where I was in the middle of a book, only to find an egregious error and be forced to go searching elsewhere for literary fulfillment.

I then got another Kindle. However, lo and behold, it came with broken wireless and quite a few hours of phonetime with Amazon only got me a third Kindle headed my way. In this third Kindle, I experienced the great joy of the Kindle’s autonomy and its desire to purchase a book when I was merely browsing. I must confess, I greatly prefer looking around Barnes and Noble, where I know that picking a book up off the shelf will not mean accidental ownership. Well, maybe if I ripped a page or something, but I would just have to hope that no one was looking. Another angry letter to Amazon, more agita, etc. etc.

The Kindle brings all the faults of technology into the old-fashioned world of books. iPods may have errors, DVDs may have errors, computers may have errors, digital cameras, but all of these are updates on still recent technology. They offer a service you could not get outside of the modern world. The closest you can get is an acted play for a DVD or a Victrola instead of an iPod; one is far too different from the first and the other has a far more noticeable lack of drawbacks compared to its futuristic offspring.

Here we seem to be going from singing a capella to an MP3 of Lady Gaga. The gap is too large to be filled by merely throwing enough marketing and lab work. In the end, the experience and medium is just too different. The Kindle cannot replace the book. At best, it can fill a book-on-tape-esque role, but I think even that is too much. Yes, the Kindle is growing in popularity, but I think most of that is because it is very fashionable right now and attracting both curious readers and people who are only starting to exercise that vestigial skill because it’s trendy. “No one” read books a few years ago. “No one” is still reading books. The only difference is everyone who is “someone” is reading a Kindle.

Recently, someone dug up an article written in Newsweek which may have the title of the worst prediction in history. It essentially denounces any use of the internet. Perhaps this will be another such prediction. I certainly hope not. If I am wrong, I cannot imagine it being due to the victory of a superior being…merely a triumph of marketing.

[special thanks to Ryan Oliveira for the photoshop]